Amazon joins Apple, Google by reducing the cut of the app store

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Zoom in / The Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet, which runs Amazon’s Fire operating system.

Apparently following the lead of Apple and Google, Amazon has announced that it will take a smaller cut in revenue from apps developed by teams earning less than $ 1 million a year from their apps on the Amazon Appstore. The same goes for developers who are brand new to the market.

Amazon’s new program, called the Amazon Appstore Small Business Accelerator Program, will launch in the fourth quarter of this year and will reduce the cut Amazon takes in app revenue, which was previously 30%. (Developers who make over $ 1 million a year will continue to pay the original fee.) For some, it’s a slightly worse deal than Apple or Google, and for others, it’s better.

Amazon’s new indie-friendly rate is 20%, in contrast to Apple and Google’s 15%. Amazon tries to make up for this difference by giving developers 10% of the Appstore revenue in the form of credit for AWS. For some developers using AWS, it could mean that Amazon’s actual cut is actually 10 percent, not 15 or 20 percent.

But for some, it amounts to more like giving the developer a coupon on a service purchase from Amazon than actually putting more money in their pocket. Leave small developers who aren’t spending a lot of money on Amazon’s services with a worse deal than they would get in Apple’s or Google’s markets.

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As with Apple’s program, but not Google’s, the lower rate applies to developers only if they have earned $ 1 million or less in total (in this case, the numbers evaluated are those of the previous year). Exceeding this threshold will lead developers to pay the oldest and highest rate on all their earnings. Conversely, Google always takes a smaller cut than the first million in a given year and then applies the largest cut to revenue after $ 1 million without changing the amount it took from the first million.

The Amazon Appstore exists primarily as an app store for Amazon’s Android-based Fire OS software that runs on tablets. It is also offered as an alternative App Store for users of other Android-based operating systems.

All three companies are facing various forms of regulatory scrutiny, and that scrutiny was likely a factor in Apple’s decision to cut the fees charged to apps released by small developers on Apple’s App Store. Google followed shortly after for its Google Play marketplace.

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